Justice Minister Judith Collins has announced legislation will be introduced to Parliament today to clear the way for changes to laws dictating the line of succession to the throne.

The Royal Succession Bill allows an elder daughter to precede a younger son in the line of succession, meaning the order of succession to the throne will no longer be based on gender.

“The new laws will apply to any children in the Royal line of succession born after 28 October 2011. This means the change will apply to the child of Their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, due to be born in July,” says Ms Collins.

If we are to have a monarchy, then it is a good thing that women will no longer be discriminated against.

The new rules will also allow a person married to a Roman Catholic to become King or Queen. Currently, prospective heirs who are married to Catholics are disqualified from succession.

The changes will not allow a Catholic to accede to the throne. The rules which require the Sovereign to swear an oath to maintain the Protestant religion will remain unchanged.

Which is just one reason why NZ as a secular country should not be part of a system that prohibits Catholics from becoming the New Zealand Head of State.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2013 at 10:00 am and is filed under NZ Politics.
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The arrangements for our Head of State are plain silly. A young couple far far away affect who eventually our Head of State. And if it is a girl or boy, whether he or she marries a catholic, it is plain stupid stuff. This Bill will expose the absurdity of it all. However the Queen is a fine person, Prince Charles and his wife made a good impression and Prince William and Catherine seem a perfectly nice modern couple. I just wonder what the point of it all is.

“However the Queen is a fine person, Prince Charles and his wife made a good impression and Prince William and Catherine seem a perfectly nice modern couple.”

A group of political cowards who have jointly presided over the complete decline of the once great British empire. Charles too has been a constant behind the scenes campaigner for many a left wing political cause. Useless empty headed liberals handing out honours to degenerates and disgracing all those truly deserving. Just gape jawed fatuous idiots.

>The changes will not allow a Catholic to accede to the throne. The rules which require the Sovereign to swear an oath to maintain the Protestant religion will remain unchanged.

Surely this would go against the Bill Of Rights Act which says: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and belief, including the right to adopt and to hold opinions without interference.”

The religion requirement also violates this clause in the UN Declaration of Human Rights: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”

The requirement for marriages to have the approval of the monarch violates this clause in the UNDHR: “Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.”

I expect the select committee will amend the bill so that it doesn’t violate NZ and international human rights standards.

I’ve got a soft spot for the dear old Queen (although not as much as I did for the Queen Mother and Diana-sighs), but I tend to be a gradualist republican; which means that I think it would be a tactical blunder to have a head of state referendum until the sad day comes when we must bid goodbye to her. Insofar as modernising the institution of monarchy goes, I’m all for it, but why have a hereditary monarchy at all? I’d much rather have an elected presidential head of state selected on merit (although the United States is a ghastly example of what can happen when things go wrong- ie Duhhhhhhhhhbya, who has replaced Lincoln’s predecessor James Buchanan* as Worst US Prez Ever).

*Embarrassingly, I must note Buchanan may have been the only gay president to date, albeit closeted. Anyhow, Buchanan’s pandering to the Deep South in a futile bid to preserve US unity only precipitated the tragic events of the US Civil War, insured the formation of the Republican Party and the election of Abraham Lincoln as his successor.

Keeping the staus quo (constitutional monarchy, whatever succession rules it has) is common sense for us. Every state needs checks and balances: any with a single body of lawmakers is precarious (just have a look around for proof of this).

New Zealand is a small state, with one house, which is effectively held in check by our head of state. If a government were to exceed their brief, we have recourse (unexercised but very real). We cannot get rid of a head of state without replacing it with an equivalent: president, senate, upper house, etc. This is extremely costly, inefficient in a country of our size, (and horribly political given our size, as well).

A written constitution would not be a fall back: even if we could get anyone to agree on it, it effectively freezes a country into the concerns, circumstances and expectations of one small period in time (just note the great hole the US dug for themselves with their constitution: some things will never move forward or adapt.)

We, on the other hand, have an adaptable, organic system, run largely at someone else’s cost (we contribute almost nothing to the cost of the monarchy), with very little interference, unswayed by political motivations, ideals or influence, but, for all that, real and effective. If any government were to overstep, we would have recourse (essential for democracy).

Why anyone wants to swap this effective and efficient system for something costlier, riskier, more political, with less checks and balances, I don’t know (unless they have political ambitions to be dictator, or lead us into a one-party dictatorship, or drive us into the economic instability of any small republic) .

Surely this Parliament has more pressing matters to attend to than engaging in more cultural -Marxist AstroTurfing over “equality”. Perhaps not.

This isn’t our idea. The UK are changing their succession rules, and because their King/Queen becomes our King/Queen, we have to do likewise in order to avoid a potential conflict in rules. So if you want to blame anyone, blame David Cameron’s Conservatives.

“Which is just one reason why NZ as a secular country should not be part of a system that prohibits Catholics from becoming the New Zealand Head of State.”

If there are good, practical reasons to become a republic this surely isn’t one of them. I don’t know any Catholics – the writer included – who aspire to be the Sovereign. This ‘prohibition’ is no more illogical than the ‘prohibition’ on non-descendants of George V becoming the New Zealand Head of State.

If a member of the royal family wants to join the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church then I would expect them to happily forgo the succession. The Duchess of Kent did.

While NZ retains Her Majesty as Head of State, the relevant NZ legislation needs to be in sync with the equivalent UK legislation. Otherwise on the death of a Monarch, ‘A’ may be the successor in UK while ‘B’ may be the successor in NZ and ‘B’ either may not be interested or if really cheeky could come to NZ and live in Government House.

Today we associate the monarchy with being the protection of our system of (national self) government and its virtues.

This derives from the role of the King in battle against the enemies of the realm and the courts of the land doing the King’s justice. Of course the Crown was also champion of the feudal order and threatened by anyone promoting some democratic equality. The result of the first serious power struggle in that regard lead to the military strongman of an oligarchic parliament (no more for democracy than their King) styling himself Lord Protector after the King’s head was cut off. This to appeal to those who saw the monarch as acting for God – and all to ingratiate himself into the role as dictator and betray everything the parliament had been fighting for. Thus paving the way for the restoration of Anglican monarchy that we have had to put up with to this day. This was managed by profiling Catholic monarchy as bad and untrustworthy (now the synonym for this is “European”) and Anglican Church monarchy as English and their own brand of sugar and spice and puppy dog tails.

In the former colonies the monarchy has been branded as the symbol of historic connection to the homeland – with due loyalty to its continuance demonstrating respect for ones own ancesters and also for the cult of the God of England throne. To justify reverence for this historic “relic/ship of state” we associate this with the protection of our system of (national self) government and its virtues. Much like Jews remember Passover and await the Messiah next year in Jerusalem and do this all round the world. It’s of a national cult tradition, but we are too secular to acknowledge this outright and thus apologise/rationalise its continuance in other ways. But it is the reason why we have prayer and swear on bibles in parliament.

peterwn (1,933) Says:
February 19th, 2013 at 1:46 pm
While NZ retains Her Majesty as Head of State, the relevant NZ legislation needs to be in sync with the equivalent UK legislation. Otherwise on the death of a Monarch, ‘A’ may be the successor in UK while ‘B’ may be the successor in NZ and ‘B’ either may not be interested or if really cheeky could come to NZ and live in Government House.
——————————–

Now that sounds like fun. It’s been a while since we saw a decent spat over the monarchy, and goodness knows Government house has cost us enough in maintenance, why not have someone with a decent title living there. Bring it on I say.

Mind you, I suspect by time we go through the boredom of having Charles as King, and Will’s has done his thing, I doubt there will be any sort of Monarchy for little princess Agatha (or what ever revolting name she’ll be called) to claim. Still, she will probably be a very rich little princess and be given all the respect anyone with that amount of money can buy.

“If we are to have a monarchy, then it is a good thing that women will no longer be discriminated against.”

I don’t follow this logic at all. If we are to have a hereditary monarchy, then all of us who weren’t born into an enormously wealthy family of German extraction are being discriminated against on grounds of birth. If you accept this totally mad system, shouldn’t you just accept whatever rules the rich Germans make up?